PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Hunger turned to anger in Haiti’s capital on Wednesday as hundreds of protesters marched through the streets accusing local officials of demanding bribes for donated food.
Aid workers say that food and other supplies are flowing into the country three weeks after the Jan. 12 quake, but red tape, fear of ambush, transportation bottlenecks and corruption are keeping it from many people who need it.
Hungry protesters jogged along a broad avenue in the Port-au-Prince suburb of Petionville waving branches and chanting, “They stole the rice! They stole the rice!”
One of the protesters, 17-year-old Danka Tanzil, said a local official was demanding a bribe in return for coupons that entitle people to bags of donated food from the U.N. World Food Program.
People at small protests elsewhere had a simpler message, holding up banners reading: “Help us, We’re starving.”
The World Food Program began distributing the coupons to bring order to the aid distribution and it has largely worked, despite scattered reports of abuses.
Also in the struggling village of Callebas, parents said Wednesday they willingly handed their children to American missionaries who showed up in a bus promising to give them a better life — contradicting claims by the Baptist group’s leader that the children came from orphanages and distant relatives.
The 10 Baptists, most from Idaho, were arrested last week trying to take 33 Haitian children across the border into the Dominican Republic without the required documents.
The group was being questioned. A district attorney will then determine whether to file charges, officials said.
The Haitian parents said they surrendered their children after they were told their children would be educated at a home in the Dominican Republic so that they might eventually return to take care of their families.
